Giggle Academy, Concept Brainstorm

- A CZ project, Feb 2024

Make basic education accessible, addictive and adaptive, to the kids who don’t
have access to them today, all around the world, for free.

Problem

“Over 75% of the world's 781 million illiterate adults are found in South Asia,
West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, and women represent almost two-thirds of
all illiterate adults globally.” - Wikipedia1

Overview

1. Provide grade 1-12 level education content, with an adaptive individualized

curriculum
a. Not aimed to replace the existing education systems.
b. Aimed to provide access to underprivileged kids in developing
countries (who do not have access to education). The 13 year old kid
who never went to school.
c. Basic reading and writing, language, literature.
d. Math, Science, Physics, Biology, Finance
e. Senior high school level classes including Programming, Arts
f. Topics current schools don’t teach: EQ, Negotiations, Finance,
Entrepreneurship, Sales, Legal or Accounting, Blockchain, AI
g. No history, religion, etc. Too much potential debate on a global
platform.
h. Not aim to bring kids to college, but to help them find a better job
than they would be able to otherwise.
2. Completely free
a. All courses are free.
b. Zero revenue platform.
c. Available to all.
3. Completely online
a. No physical presence
b. Scalable

1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate
 c. Use AI & automation
d. There are some drawbacks to the online approach, such as lack of
peer support, group learning, etc. We won’t be able to solve all
problems. We will try to address some of these issues in later
iterations.
4. Gamification
a. Make learning addictive.
b. High quality education content from the best teachers and game
developers in the world.
c. Badges (NFTs), points, scores, rankings, etc.
d. Ensure kids with illiterate parents are able to follow along.
e. Systematic progress and content selection. Natural progression like
game flow. No need for kids (or parents) to search for segmented
content in different parts of the internet to follow through.
f. Early education (elementary school levels) are easier to gamify. High
school subjects become more difficult as the subject becomes more
complex. Hopefully by then, the kids have developed enough learning
habits to sustain their on-going learning.
g. Also need to consider the risk of “over gamification”. Too much
dopamine may also be bad. Children need to develop delayed
gratification and grit.
5. Adaptive curriculum, subject specialization encouraged
a. Current schools tend to encourage kids to be “average”. Ie, you are
good at math, but weak in English, so you should spend more time on
English than Math. We lean towards the opposite.
b. Students who are good at Math will be nudged to focus more on
Math, and less on other subjects.
c. We feel this is the most effective way for them to be the strongest at
what they do best, and make themselves most valuable to the world.
6. Not focused on degrees, but self certification with Giggle points, levels and
badges.
a. Not aimed to bring that 13 year old kid into a college in a developed
country.
b. Aimed to allow that kid to be able to get a better job than he/she
wouldn’t have been otherwise.
c. A Giggle level or badge system will be developed to identify how far a
student has progressed on a certain subject.
 d. For example, Science Level 391 Purple Badge could mean Grade 3,
91% completion, at top 20 percentile. Or Rust Programmer Level
1021 Gold, etc. These will surely be changed as we develop.
e. Levels and badges will be issued as Soul Bound Tokens. SBT are
blockchain based tokens that cannot be transferred to others.
Potential employers can easily verify them on the blockchain, with
the students' permission.
7. Anti-cheat mechanisms
a. The device camera will be turned on at random times to perform
facial recognition to ensure the student is not someone else. (Need to
check Privacy policies in some countries.)
b. Timing heuristics will be analyzed to ensure no bots. (And determine
the student’s strength.)
c. AI will be used to screen out AI answers.
8. Parents
a. Some parents in our target market may prefer kids “working in the
fields” rather than spending their time learning. We need to come up
with incentives for parents to keep kids in school. See Learn-to-Earn.
b. Parents' education: why is education important? Why do kids need to
go learn?
c. Comprehensive reports for high touch parents. Simple reports to
“low touch”, or even illiterate parents.
d. Timely notifications to allow both types of parents to follow and
encourage kids progress.
9. Social/Community support
a. One of the challenges is mental health and peer support, which are
vital for kids to sustain long term commitment to learning.
b. Provide social circles for kids with similar subjects / interests /
strength / proximity to interact with each other.
c. Peer tutoring, counseling and mentoring by older kids and volunteers.
d. Form private consultation channels with volunteers
10.Job Market
a. Potential employers can filter kids by their certification or skills
achieved.
b. AI based summary of kids history provided (potentially for a fee to
the employers)
c. Employers can give feedback or ratings to kids, with appropriate
 privacy controls.
d. Kids get paid. Incentive for parents to keep kids in school.
e. The earlier (in age) we can do this for kids, the better.
f. Need to look for partnerships with companies that have simple jobs.
g. Start simple jobs early (say around 13), like tagging for AI.
h. Progress to more advanced jobs like Customer Support, Marketing
Associate, Community Moderator, etc.
11.Teachers & Content
a. Teachers are underpaid world wide. Average pay for teachers in the
US is about $30,000 annually. Most other countries are lower.
b. Many talented teachers go on to do something else, leaving only the
truly passionate, or the under qualified. Resulting in poor education
for kids, especially in our target geographies.
c. Allow teachers to contribute educational material. Give high rewards
for the best performing content. Let the best content/teachers “rise
to the top”. Then distribute the content at scale, for free.
12.Internet and Device Access
a. While this is identified as a key problem for our target market, they
are hardware & infrastructure projects, not our core expertise
(software platforms). We will look to partner with others in these
areas. See Appendix B.
b. Most rural villages have an internet connection at least. We need to
figure out how to leverage that.
13.Content Copyright
a. Others can use the content as long as they also provide all their
content free of charge too. A website with partial paid content does
not qualify.
b. Open-source education.
14.Degrees, universities & higher education
a. Provide a path for kids who want to continue into higher education.

Why (do this)?

1. I (CZ) thought about what to do next for a few months. I need to find
something that has the maximum positive impact that I could achieve in
this world. This would require me to do something that I am good at and
scalable.
 2. I could try to help fight corruption, world hunger, climate change, etc. But I
have no expertise there. My effectiveness will be low. I believe as more
people become better educated, they will indirectly help with these issues.
3. I could embark on biotech, try to help cure diseases and improve longevity.
Again, not my area of expertise. I will contribute to these as a passive
investor.
4. My area of expertise is building (teams to build) software platforms. We
(together with a team) can reach hundreds of millions of people. This is
scalable, and thus high impact. In addition, education is fundamental to
everything in our world. Give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish.
5. This is the most impactful thing that I could come up with for the next
chapter of my life.

FAQ
1. Why not partner with an existing Education Charity?
a. We/I (CZ) are fully willing to work with other charities, including
donations, etc. They are not mutually exclusive.
b. For Giggle Academy, we want autonomy to develop our own
approach, and at our own (fast) pace.
c. We welcome and encourage everyone to try to build more
educational platforms or content. The more the merrier.
d. We researched many of the existing platforms for apps (Appendix A).
We find that many are for profit, targeted at developed countries, or
with other differences to our mission.
2. Why not focus on higher education or professional development?
a. There are many other sites doing that already. Professional
development is a segment that is easier to generate revenue. We
want to focus on the “first mile” where it is harder to generate
revenue. We don’t expect to have any revenue.
3. Who is your competition?
a. There is no competition. Our platform does not generate revenue.
We welcome everyone to “compete” with us, to provide better
educational content. The more the merrier.
4. Many others have failed at poverty education, what makes you think you
will be successful?
a. We don’t know for sure. Success is never guaranteed, but that
doesn’t stop us from trying.
5. Why the name Giggle Academy (as opposed to something more serious)?
a. Our target audience are kids who may not have literate parents to
nudge them along. We feel learning should be fun, and addictive. And
the domain is available.
6. Allow anyone to upload educational materials?
a. We will build out a set of initial materials first. Test the waters. We
will likely offer this feature in the future to allow for teachers to
compete for the best education material, and get well compensated.
7. What is your revenue model?
a. None. The basic education part will always remain free.
b. In the future, higher (post grade 12) courses may charge a fee. The
job market may charge a fee for the employers.
c. We may accept donations.
8. How do you sustain yourself?
a. This project is funded by CZ.
9. How much money is CZ willing to spend to keep this going?
a. If we can achieve effectiveness, ie, the product/results are good, then
I (CZ) am willing to fund this program for as much as needed. I believe
this is one of the most impactful ways to spend money.
10.Can I donate?
a. Not at this time. We are sufficiently funded for now. We may accept
donations once the platform is up and running, and proven to be
effective. We don’t want to accept donations until then. Let CZ take
the initial risks.
11.Pay-to-learn (or learn-to-earn)?
a. While we do recognize this is helpful to persuade parents to keep kids
in school, there are a number of issues that come with it.
b. We are unlikely to do this in the initial phases, as it complicates the
financial model of the platform. We want to focus on solving the
problem of creating sticky educational content first. One problem at a
time. We will address this in later phases.
12.Is there a (crypto) token with this project?
a. No.
13.Can I help or join the program?
a. If you are a teacher who can create digital content, or a game or app
developer and shares our mission, please reach out to us at
(jobs@giggleacademy.com).
Next Steps
As with building any platform, we will iterate in incremental phases.

Phase 1 MVP (Minimum Viable Product) - Can we achieve good gamification?

1. Gamify a level 1 English course.
2. Web only, but should fit on a mobile browser.

Phase 2 & the future - Scale

3. More courses, more languages, more devices…